There’s really not much positive going for twentysomethings today. College graduation is years behind us, and all the promise that brought is fading ever faster into the piles of tuition debt, bills that are past due, and cars that constantly run on empty. Some of us made it out, found jobs, and live in apartments in cities we always wanted to see. Some landed in the middle, taking a job in an unknown suburb for too little pay and nothing more than the promise of a promotion three years from now to keep them motivated. Still, the biggest group, the one I’m in, regressed. We find ourselves living in our childhood homes, working two or three jobs, and borrowing money to pay for our cell phones. This isn’t what our parents had envisioned when they signed those tuition checks.
We’re here, applying for part-time work at grocery stores, coffee shops, and anywhere else that can bring in that seven dollars an hour we desperately need. In our off time, we chase our dreams. Some of us try to act, some want to be golf pros, some web designers. Late Nite Design started with a bang, and then quickly ran right into a wall. The ever slowing economy made clients less frequent and less speedy, as they had to spend more time on their own work to fund the college payments for their kids. We still work, but not nearly as much as we would like. A year ago, the promise of an office and a place of our own was right around the corner. Now, we’ve rounded the corner and found only a long, desolate road waiting for us. It would appear that we have a much longer journey if we want to reach our goals.
The last six months have taken their toll on our personal lives, our checkbooks, and our friendship. We remain close, and when we work, the magic that made this go is still there, but it’s fleeting. Our shared struggle to get by has forced less communication and more frustration than we could have imagined. Daily visits to design blogs and entries into graphic arts contests have been swapped for job application sites. But yet we fight on.
There’s a choice. Either give up and resign the next few years of your life to finding any job that will take you, or continue the stream of debt and day-to-day bank account checking for a shot at something more. We’ve made ours. Maybe it’s because we just can’t accept a cubicle. Maybe it’s because we believe we’re really good at what we do. Personally, I’ve just met too many people who hate what they are. There’s nothing that inspires more fear than meeting someone in their sixties who made a career out of a job that were just going to do for awhile until they started doing what they really wanted. How many fraudulent lawyers, insurance agents, and businessmen have you met? How many of them wanted to introduce themselves as a mid-level account manager when they grew up? Some will say, “that’s life.” Sadly, they are correct way too often. That is life. We just don’t want it to be our lives.
The reason I even decided to write today, as opposed to applying for a job as a poker dealer at the local casino, was because I stumbled across a pilot for a television show done by a group called Summer of Tears. They won the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen a couple years back, and like the winners before them, they parlayed their success into a shot a television show. Balancing their actual jobs with their dream job, they made a pilot for Warner Brothers. Maybe it just hit me at the right time, or maybe they really did do it right, but I was hooked. They took one of the more honest looks into the lives of failed college graduates and tried to tell it their way. Now they’re a sketch comedy group by trade, and so the episode is mostly meant to be comedic (and it is). But the last four minutes or so stunned me with it’s honesty. You can watch it here:
The pilot never got picked up, mainly due to the fact that Warner Brothers is full aging chimps attempting to define meaningful entertainment for a demographic they don’t understand, but it has a very real effect. It works, and it’s right. More than that, it’s creators represented a group of guys, a lot like us, who are a drop of water in a sea of people who share their craft. They went after what they dreamt and they chased it relentlessly until it became real. There is nothing more admirable, especially in times like these- when we all need inspiration.
So this is my offering of encouragement to the rest of my peers. We can’t quit yet. After being told repeatedly that “it’s people your age who are going to save this country,” I’m only sure of one thing: we aren’t going to do it by settling. Go for broke now. Even if we miss, what do we lose? Those applications to Taco Bell will always be there. Don’t be sixty and remember this as the last time you felt alive.
To Summer of Tears: If you ever read this, and I’m nearly positive you wont, thank you for what you did. I may never see your show on T.V., but you inspired at least one person out there. Thank you for that.
